YouGov
 |
|
| Public limited company | |
| Traded as | : |
| Industry |
Market research Opinion polling |
| Founded | 2000 |
| Founders |
Stephan Shakespeare Nadhim Zahawi |
| Headquarters | London, United Kingdom |
|
Area served
|
Worldwide |
|
Key people
|
Stephan Shakespeare (CEO) Roger Parry (Chairman) |
| Revenue | £88.2 million (2016) |
| £10.9 million (2016) | |
|
Number of employees
|
692 (2016) |
| Website | yougov.com |
YouGov is an international Internet-based market research firm, headquartered in the UK, with operations in Europe, North America, the Middle East and Asia-Pacific. It has no known connection with the UK government despite the name
YouGov was founded in the UK in May 2000 by Stephan Shakespeare and Nadhim Zahawi. In April 2005, YouGov became a public company listed on the Alternative Investment Market of the .
Stephan Shakespeare has been YouGov’s Chief Executive Officer since 2010.Roger Parry has been YouGov’s Chairman since 2007. Political commentator Peter Kellner was YouGov’s President until he stepped down in 2016.
YouGov is a member of the British Polling Council.
YouGov specialises in market research through online methods. The company’s methodology involves obtaining responses from an invited group of Internet users, and then weighting these responses in line with demographic information. It draws these demographically-representative samples from a panel of 5 million people worldwide including over 800,000 people in the UK. As YouGov's online methods use no field-force, its costs are lower than some face-to-face or telephone methods.
YouGov has claimed that its opinion polls are most accurate when compared to its competitors and in particular that its online methodology is more accurate than traditional polling methods. Critics have argued that, as not all of the public have access to the Internet, online samples cannot accurately reflect the views of the population as a whole. YouGov counters that they have a representative panel and they are able to weight their data appropriately to reflect the national audience that they are aiming to poll.
During the United Kingdom general election 2005 campaign, most traditional polls reported Labour's support in the range from 38 to 41%, compared with the 36% it achieved on polling day. In contrast, YouGov's nine polls during the final three weeks of the campaign all showed Labour on 36 or 37%, although GfK NOP (published in The Independent) gave the most accurate forecast in their final poll before the election.
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Wikipedia